


in loving memory

by esthernn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Child Abuse, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, sirius black has abandonment issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26152135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esthernn/pseuds/esthernn
Summary: Sirius Black is falling.He is seven years old and he is twenty-seven.He is nowhere and he is every place he’s ever been......Sirius is falling through the veil.
Relationships: Regulus Black & Sirius Black, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, mentions of James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 60





	in loving memory

Sirius Black is falling.

He is seven years old and he is twenty-seven.

He is nowhere and he is every place he’s ever been.

He isn’t sure if he _is_ at all. Sirius knows to some extent he’s real, he can sense it like one senses the ground beneath their feet; he feels his breath catch, so he must be breathing. And yet the world around him is shifting and existing all at once, too much existence to identify.

The air smells like smoke and it sparks with magic. And yet, Sirius isn’t sure if he’s breathing at all, or was even breathing in the first place.

Was there ever even air here?

And suddenly Sirius realizes he hasn’t been falling at all.

For hours he’s been perched cross legged on his bed, his back to his headboard. Beside him is Regulus, small and quiet.

“-might even have to marry _Bella_ ,” Sirius finishes.

Regulus crumples up his face. “She’s already engaged, mummy can’t make her marry me.”

Sirius laughs. He loves freaking out Regulus, and it’s not difficult with a family like theirs.

“Sometimes engagements get called off, Reg. And you’re an eligible young bachelor.”

Regulus squeals and Sirius smirks at him. If he can’t even handle some jokes, there’s no way he’ll survive Hogwarts. Sirius is just helping prepare his little brother, that’s all. It’s his duty. After all, Sirius knows that when _he_ gets to Hogwarts, he’s not going to have any problems at all.

Regulus gets up to leave Sirius’s room, but Sirius grabs his arm to tug him back onto his bed. Regulus’s eyes widen.

“You can’t go into the hallway after dark, Reg,” Sirius says with his best mature adult voice. “The ghosts’ll get you.”

Reg quickly hops back onto the bed. “We have ghosts?” he asks, frightened.

Sirius nods, trying to look as wise as possible. “Of course we do. You know what us Blacks get up to, there must be some souls left behind from all our murdering and stuff.”

Regulus looks like he may cry as he quickly scoots up against Sirius’s arm. His hair is unruly and slung over his face, revealing only his pout; he’s in his phase where he won’t let anyone comb it.

“Oh, alright, get under the covers,” concedes Sirius. Reg really does look upset. “Do you want to hear about the time I caught Andromeda and Cissy after they took Auntie’s broomsticks and flew halfway to France?”

Regulus nods against Sirius’s arm. He’s completely swallowed up by Sirius’s heavy duvet. As much as he often feels the unbridled urge to punch him, he seems so little now that Sirius can’t help but want to comfort him. He puts his arm around him.

“Alright,” he starts. “Dromeda says it was Cissy’s idea, but she was the one who stole the broomsticks. She had to sneak out through one window and crawl back in through another to get them.”

Regulus closes his eyes as Sirius continues, his dark hair flopped over his face. The whole room is bathed in darkness.

“They didn’t even know how to get to France. Cissy had to ask some muggle which direction it was in, but they both had brooms so she said they had work there as maids. Can you imagine Cissy as a maid?”

Regulus quietly laughs.

Sirius continues. “They made it pretty far, too. But then Dromeda found-”

And suddenly light is spilling into the room, bright and harsh against Sirius’s eyes. He rapidly tries to blink vision back in.

And then the light subsides just as quickly as it had arrived, the looming figure of Walburga Black in the doorway.

On instinct alone, Sirius shrinks under the covers alongside Regulus.

“There’s a mess in my kitchen,” says Walburga. “Somebody caused it. Somebody’s going to have to get punished for it.” Her voice is gravelly, like jagged rocks being dragged against skin.

Regulus turns to Sirius, his eyes wide.

Sirius remembers walking past Regulus in the kitchen, ordering Kreacher into playing with him. Reg was trying to bake a cake, but he wouldn’t let Kreacher tell him how.

He mentally curses his brother and the rest of his messed up family.

“It was me,” says Sirius.

Walburga sneers. “Well of course it was.”

She leans over Regulus, curling up tightly under the covers, his eyes pressed shut. She grabs Sirius’s arm, shrunken back from around Regulus, and moves to drag him out of bed.

Sirius is yanked over Regulus and aggressively slammed against the floor as Walburga drags him out the door, her nails digging into his flesh deep enough to draw blood.

The sensation of being whisked through the house, too fast to breathe, feels like it may never subside.

Sirius is still being dragged against cold, rotting wooden floors, now twelve years old. He’s been twelve years old for a month. 

Walburga pulls him down the corridor and into the drawing room, blood dripping down his forearm and down to his shoulder. Regulus is watching in fear, half hiding behind the Christmas tree. Tinsel and enchanted decorations adorn the walls.

Regulus seems to be performing accidental magic, the ornaments on the tree shaking violently as he looks on in horror. It looks like a muggle horror movie, the Christmas decorations threatening to fall amidst the dark room, the candles flickering in and out.

Walburga yanks Sirius off the floor and slams him against the wall. From the motion he feels a popping in his shoulder, which is probably now dislocated.

Merry fucking Christmas.

Her arm pinning Sirius’s chest to the wallpaper, Walburga yells. “You’ve betrayed our family! You’ve forsaken your duty!”

She wheezes as her face flushes purple, apparently summoning more insults. Sirius clenches his eyes shut. In the darkness of his mind he sees screaming, he sees sitting in a dark metal box, all alone. Tattered black curtains surround him.

As he hears Walburga draw in another breath, he reopens his eyes. She bellows, “You have shamed this family with your sorting, you’ve proven yourself as a complete and utter failure! This family will never forgive your betrayal, nor will you ever rise above the mistakes you have made.”

Blinking back tears, Sirius shouts back, “This family will endorse incest and murder, but you draw the line at the color red?”

Walburga sharply breathes in, pushing him against the wall more forcefully until he struggles to breathe. Behind her, Sirius sees the shadow of his father, carrying an object he can’t identify. He’s shaded darker than the rest of the darkness as the ancient wispy black curtains block the majority of the sunlight.

“No son of mine will have been sorted into Gryffindor,” Orion quietly growls.

Sirius tightly closes his eyes again.

When he opens them, it’s Remus who’s looking at him.

Sirius is lying on his bed in the Gryffindor dorm, Remus leaning over him.

His eyes are sharp and focused, a pale sea green, the color of the paint Andromeda smeared across the walls of her new house after she ran away. She insisted on applying it the muggle way, leaving the walls patchy in a way that made her cottage a little warmer.

Remus’s eyes looked like the walls, patches of other colors and silvery hues intermeshed like stained glass.

And if his eyes are Andromeda’s walls, his skin is her floor, marred and worn, but always welcoming. The scars across his body are the scars in the wooden planks, some there from when Andromeda bought the cheapest house on the market, others relics of warm memories. The hole in the floor right by Ted’s office is a reminder of Nymphadora’s first instance of accidental magic, and the scars on Remus’s skin not left by his transformations are remnants of ill-considered pranks that Sirius or James had convinced him to reluctantly take part in.

“Good morning,” Remus smirks. “James thought we should let you sleep off your hangover, but there’s only ten minutes left of breakfast.”

As Remus spoke, Sirius had already started feeling the pangs of a headache.

“Fuck,” he groans.

Remus claps him on the back before returning to his own bed, covered in notes. “While you regret all your bad decisions, I’m going to be studying.”

Warm light is pouring through the windows between the beds.

As Sirius brings himself into wakefulness, his memories come back. “Please don’t tell me you’re studying for what I think you’re studying for.”

Remus looks up from his books to smile cheekily at Sirius. “History of magic.” His cheeks are lightly flushed.

Sirius, again groaning, rolls over in his bed until he tumbles off the mattress and onto the floor. 

Following the noise of the creaking door, Sirius sees James walk in with a muffin, laughing as he sees Sirius lying spread out on the floor between his and Moony’s beds. “I see you’ve recovered spectacularly from last night.”

Sirius grunts. “Moony, what will you do now that you’ve killed me?”

Remus snorts. “I think you’ll be alright. What was it that you said to Mary last night?” He pauses to smirk at Sirius before continuing, “Your showstopping good looks will protect you no matter what?”

Sirius blushes. Despite all his best intentions, he seems to have developed some feelings for Remus, and can’t quite resist a compliment, no matter how sarcastic.

 _Just don’t think about it_ , he reminds himself.

Sirius pulls himself upright and smirks back at Remus. “I’m so glad you can recognize my objective beauty.”

James laughs again from across the room. “Stop flirting, you too.” Sirius only steals a quick glance, but alongside the muffin he could swear that James is also holding a wanted poster with his face on it. On second glance he can see that it’s just the Prophet.

Remus lightly laughs and Sirius does, too, but he can’t help but feel a sinking feeling in his stomach. He didn’t mean to flirt. And it’s a joke, of course it’s a joke. 

This is why he didn’t want to think about it. Because he knows his friends like him well enough, but he doesn’t trust that they’d still like him if they actually knew everything about him. Sirius has a good thing going, and he doesn’t want to jeopardize that under any circumstances.

In cruel irony, he likes his friend too much to ever be able to tell him how much.

“How could anyone _not_ recognize your supposed beauty when you’re reminding us of it every two minutes,” shoots back Remus.

Sirius raises his eyebrows and places a hand to his heart. “Like you wouldn’t notice even without me pointing it out.”

Remus mirrors him, his hand over his own heart, and smiles back. “Why of course, my dear.” Sirius can swear he sees a wisp of Regulus behind Remus, looking on mournfully before turning his back.

Sirius blows him a kiss and crawls back into bed. “I’m going back to sleep. Fuck history of magic.” His headache truly is getting stronger.

As he closes his eyes, Sirius sees Remus blow a kiss back.

_It’s a joke._

_It’s a joke._

He can’t tell him how he feels. He can’t tell any of them. Not ever. If he waits long enough, it’ll go away.

Sirius drifts back off to sleep.

He dreams of a shallow green sea. It’s the color of the sky as well as the color of seaweed. It’s many colors at once, but it’s still it’s own very particular shade of pale sea green.

The water is so very still.

It’s not reflective at all, if anything it’s eating up everything around it. It’s sucking Sirius’s soul out of his body, like a dementor that he will someday meet, or perhaps has already met. Then it returns his soul, stained the same shade of green.

When Sirius wakes up, it’s Walburga standing over him.

She’s got Regulus by the collar, and while he’s clearly trying his best not to squirm or upset her further, he doesn’t look happy about it. He’s dressed so pristinely, a nice button-down under his robes and his hair slicked back. Sirius, in contrast, is wearing a t-shirt for some muggle band that he’s never heard of but knows will piss off his dearest mummy, anyway. He’s a glutton for punishment and he knows it.

“Your brother told me what you did,” she spits. “I know what he saw.”

Sirius feels his breath quicken as he quickly tries to remember everything he’d done that could upset her, and upon realizing that it’s far too much to remember, tries to instead think of what Regulus could have witnessed.

Walburga is glaring so harshly that Sirius fears that she may be eating all his magic out of him.

“I’m sorry,” Regulus whispers. Sirius doesn’t know what his mother knows, but he’s starting to suspect. Regulus looks so pitiful as he adds, “I didn’t mean to.”

Walburga drops her glare to look kindly at Regulus. “Oh, nonsense. You did nothing wrong, I’m very proud of you.”

Sirius can’t help but resent Regulus, who’s so kindly being tended to after potentially ruining Sirius’s life. But to his credit, Regulus doesn’t seem thrilled to be doted on. He’s shaking his head at Sirius, again mouthing his apologies. His hair’s coming loose from the gel.

Could Regulus have been outside that one night by the Forbidden Forest?

Walburga turns her attention back to Sirius, her gaze hardening. Regulus is still in her grasp.

“You have proven once again that you’re an irreparable thing!” she shouts, so venomous her words may be poison. And she continues, so loudly that Sirius fears his hearing may never recover, “Who even is Bertram Aubrey, certainly not one of ours?”

His heart stops.

She knows. _Regulus_ knows, and he told her.

He must have caught them by the forest. It was dark and Sirius wasn’t thinking clearly, and he assumed no one would see them kiss a few times in the darkness.

Apparently at least one person did see, and the worst possible one.

It was a mistake and Sirius knew as much at the time. He just wanted one night where he wasn’t lying. One fucking night.

Bertram had mentioned that he was meeting a friend from his house soon after, could it have been?

In what he’s mostly sure is the future, after haltingly confessing everything to James one late night, Sirius knows that James will curse Bertram for being a two-faced Slytherin cozied up to Sirius’s little brother. Or brother no longer, as it’s seeming.

He hopes it is the future he’s remembering and not just a desperate imagined plea for his life to get better. He can’t put his faith in a future he can’t focus on.

“No,” Sirius whispers.

“Yes!” shouts Walburga, flinging Regulus onto the floor. Sirius doesn’t feel bad for him. “You’ve brought shame onto our family for the last time.”

Sirius has fought with her constantly over the years, questioning her at every turn, provoking her anger, and always taking the heat for it, for both himself and Regulus. Usually himself, as Regulus seems to have learned the good fucking sense not to do anything to piss her off.

Fuck it, why not take a leaf out of his darling brother’s book?

“I’m sorry, mother,” Sirius tries, suspecting that he sounds completely disingenuous. “I made a mistake, but I want to be better. I promise.”

Walburga snarls at him. “I’m getting your father.”

In her shadow Sirius sees a smooth black liquid pooling at her feet, like a particularly unappetizing drink he’d have to choke down at dinner.

She apparates away and Sirius tries to do the math in his head as quickly as he can. She most likely doesn’t even know where his father is, as he’s notoriously hard to track down. Still, factoring in the quick speed of apparation, Sirius only has a few minutes.

Sirius does not want to be here when his parents get back. He dives across the room towards his school trunk, desperately digging through for the mirror. He finds it, praying that James is awake.

“James,” he pleads. He can’t cry now. Sirius frankly doesn’t have the time.

“Sirius?” asks James. His eyes look bleary, he must’ve been asleep.

“Can I go to yours?” Sirius asks fast, the words tumbling out of his mouth before the tears can follow. “It got bad. I only have a few minutes, please.”

“Of course,” responds James, suddenly alert. “Can you catch the Knight Bus?”

Sirius nods rapidly as he wipes his eyes. “Yeah, I can. Thanks, mate.”

Slowly he looks up at Regulus, scrunched up against the door frame. His eyes are wide but he looks so very small, the same as he did when they were children.

Sirius takes a deep breath and quietly asks him, “Come with me?”

He sees Reg hesitate, and dares to hope for a moment that he might say yes. He’s looking into his eyes, and they’re scared. Sirius can still save him.

But then Regulus sadly shakes his head. “I can’t,” he says, and drops his head. He doesn’t leave the room, but he avoids eye contact and they both know that Sirius can’t ask again.

Sirius takes his wand and casts a shrinking spell on his trunk. The ministry won’t dare investigate magic from Grimmauld Place, however underage.

With his wand in one hand and his little trunk in the other, he walks out in silence. He knows he won’t be back, won’t see his clothes or the posters his parents so hate ever again. It’s alright, Sirius can always get more stuff, but right now he’s running out of time.

He walks down the corridors and out the door, not daring to look back until he reaches the edge of the property. When he finally turns, he sees Regulus, looking on mournfully from the entrance, holding the front door open. For a few moments they watch one another. They both know there will be no goodbyes. Slowly Regulus bows his head and takes a few steps back, closing the door in front of him.

This is the worst part.

Sirius takes a few deep breaths as he turns back around and keeps walking.

Regulus is just one more person who refuses to be with him, letting him just move on alone. If he rots in that house, if it poisons him until he suffocates, he’ll deserve it.

Sirius won’t cry for him.

He keeps walking until he reaches the shore of the shallow green sea, then he keeps going still. He wades through the murky waters, letting them lap at his thighs.

The water is so very cold, yet it draws him further in. He wades further in for many minutes more, or perhaps many hours. Maybe only a few seconds.

Eventually Sirius has crossed the sea, the water subsiding. 

In front of him is the door to his and Remus’s flat, worn and haphazardly repaired. It was a cheap deal for the place, but Moony fixed it up pretty alright.

Sirius unlocks it and steps inside, two aurors behind him. He holds the door open as he turns to face them. To his back is Remus, lying with his feet up on the couch. He had looked tired that morning, after all, it was only two days after the full moon.

“James and Lily Potter are dead,” says one of the aurors. He’s the taller of the two, his hair neatly gelled back.

Sirius knew, but he didn’t _know._ He had some last vestiges of hope, some lost prayer that Peter had somehow made a mistake. _James and Lily?_

“What?”

The tall man continues, “Sirius Black, you are under arrest for the murders of James Potter, Lily Potter, and Peter Pettigrew, as well as twelve muggles.”

_So it’s true._

And after everything, after losing everything but them, they’re gone, too. Behind him, Sirius hears Remus choke back a sob. Everyone’s gone but the two of them, and this is how he’s finding out.

_James._

He’d been there from the beginning. He was everything Sirius never had. He was the brother who left him, the parents who hated him, the friends who he was always a little too much for. James was an entire world and he was just gone.

_And Lily._

Sirius truly had grown to love her. She was there for Remus when Sirius couldn’t be and she loved James like he always deserved. She was kind and shone bright. And gone.

 _James and Lily_.

_Gone._

Sirius maintains his composure as the aurors magically bind his wrists, spells cast under their breath, and slowly pull him out the door. He’s still numb. James and Lily are gone, and Peter was never really theirs at all.

It’s not until he meets Remus’s eyes, himself halfway out the door, that Sirius breaks. 

Remus looks shocked, and moreover, as betrayed as Sirius is. Remus thinks he did it. Holy fuck, he really thinks Sirius killed them. He has no way of knowing otherwise, of course he doesn’t, but Sirius can’t help but feel his heart break anyway as he realizes that he’s losing Remus, too.

Remus will forever think he’s a murderer, he’ll think he’s everything he’s spent his whole life trying not to be. Sirius was good and kind and loved and it was all futile anyway. He desperately tried to cling to what he loved and it just got wrenched away, piece after piece after piece.

Behind Remus, flickering in and out of the world, is Regulus, wearing Remus’s same hurt look, inky black liquid dripping out of his mouth.

And he’s gone again and it’s just Remus in front of him. Tears are brimming in his eyes, clouding the green into a blurry smudge, and Sirius loses all his composure. Tears are streaming down his face and he can't think. The doors of the flat are closing, Remus is disappearing, and Sirius wants to shout “I love you” or some other desperate plea, but he doesn’t. He knows he’ll grow to regret it, cold and alone, absent of everything in the world in his cell. He wants to scream everything he’s ever felt, everything he’s ever thought, but the door is closed and the shorter auror is pulling him into side-along apparation.

He lost his chance. He lost Remus.

Sirius feels his organs ripped apart and put back together as the apparation drags on and on. The world is blurring and ripped black curtains are fluttering all around him.

Finally he tumbles back into the world. He’s sixteen and sitting alone on the Hogwarts grounds.

His friends are all gone and it’s his fault. Sirius knows it’s on him, but it really doesn’t make the whole thing any better.

He put Moony at risk and it was really, more than anything, just so fucking stupid. Remus is worth more than a stupid prank, especially on Snivellus of all people. And now he’s not speaking to him and Sirius gets why, he really does. Remus is completely justified.

Sirius fucked up.

He wanders back into Hogwarts, his head down and his metaphorical tail between his legs. He makes his way into the Great Hall in the midst of lunch, adamantly refusing to make eye contact with anyone. Sirius won’t stay, not without his friends to display like armor, so he snags a sandwich and leaves.

Sirius ends up alone in a corridor, praying that no one passes him in such a pitiful state. He eats his sandwich quietly. When it’s done he keeps walking down the corridor, winding through endless passages he doesn’t recognize until he finds himself winding towards the top of the tower overlooking the lake.

He hates himself for what he did. He hurt Moony and lost himself his friends, the ones who were supposed to be the constant in his life. He never expected his family to be there, not even Regulus or Andromeda. Especially not Regulus or Andromeda, who frankly both had their own shit to work out. His parents were dicks, but at least they’d always been consistent.

Sirius’s friends, though, were supposed to be there. And he ruined it.

He bumps shoulders with Lily, by accident, in his wild frenzy around the castle. She glares at him and he hates himself, no words needed. Nothing makes you feel ashamed like Lily Evans’s glare.

Despite being a stick in the mud and generally not particularly fun, she’s undoubtedly a better person than him. She listens to Remus when he talks and lends him the notes that Sirius doesn’t bother to take. 

Lily even gave Sirius a chance, letting him cry into her shoulder one dark night after Easter break. She listened like he couldn’t trust anyone else to.

Sirius wishes he were more like her. He’s not enough for his friends, he knows it. He’s too loud, too brash, too temperamental for them. He doesn’t deserve companionship or support or whatever it is that friends are supposed to provide. Not being like he is. If he has to change to earn them back, then so be it.

And now, with his stupid fucking mistake. It was selfish, because Sirius is selfish and fundamentally flawed, just like his mother has screamed at him so many times.

Sirius has to be better.

He’s made it to the top of the tower. It’s so cold, wind coursing through violently.

The lake below is the same shallow green sea that’s been haunting his dreams. It’s both the endless body of his imagination, and confined to its physically limited existence as a lake. It’s shallow and still, a light green that eats up everything else.

Sirius takes a slow, deep breath, and dives into it.

He spends a long time in the air and an even longer time in the water. Instead of reaching the bottom, he keeps sinking and sinker, deeper and deeper.

Eventually he comes back up for air, pulling himself to the surface.

He’s at the little lake by the Potter’s house, the summer before seventh year. It’s as warm and welcoming as the Potters.

At the edge of the lake, perched on the dock that Fleamont occasionally tries to fish from, Sirius’s friends are calling for him. Remus looks fantastic with his hair pushed back from his eyes and a grin on his face, Sirius thinks.

He paddles over for about a minute, laughing as James and Peter mime pulling him in with a fishing rod. As he gets to the edge, he reaches up for Remus to pull him out of the water. He’s dripping wet and shakes his head like a dog, flinging water over everyone, especially Remus. Remus scrunches his nose at him, but he kisses him anyway.

Sirius laughs and kisses him again.

“Quit it, mate,” says James. “We can’t be having Remus think you like him better than me.”

Sirius smirks at him. “What will we tell Lily?”

James smirks back. “She already knows I love you more.”

Remus raises an eyebrow and James drops his smirk. Eyes to the floor and much quieter, James says, “I do love Lily a little more.”

Sirius hops to his feet and punches the air. “I knew it! I knew you liked her better than me!” He dramatically turns his head away from him, “Oh, how it hurts my heart.”

Remus lightly laughs and grins at them, then stands to join Sirius. “C’mon, let’s go inside. _I’m hungry._ ”

Peter hops to his feet as well. “Please let's eat.”

James laughs as he slowly gets to his feet. “Fine.”

As Remus takes Sirius by the hand to lead him inside, Sirius turns to glare at James. “I can’t believe you like her better than me.”

James laughs and responds, “You like Moony better, it’s only fair.”

The rest of the walk back is more jokes and anticipation for Lily’s arrival for the rest of the summer. How she’ll be able to stand being around them all day for a week, Sirius doesn’t know.

Euphemia Potter fusses over them all as she feeds them, teasing James about the clothes on his floor.

“At least Sirius keeps _his_ floor tidy.”

Sirius cheekily smiles at James. “We all know I’m the favorite child.”

Euphemia pats him on the shoulder. “Right you are.”

During dinner, Sirius tells Remus he can share his room, right across from James’s. _His_ room. Sirius has a room at the Potter’s. Sometimes he still can’t believe his luck that he stumbled into such an amazing family.

When everyone’s done eating, the boys agree to go watch the sunset from the dock and Fleamont assures them that they’ll get an excellent view.

It’s only a short walk, and it was definitely worth it. 

Sirius holds Remus’s hand as they watch the sky flush brilliant shades of pink and red, and Sirius knows that he loves him, and he believes Remus when he says that he loves him back. He loves all of his friends so much and they love him too.

Remus’s hand is warm in Sirius’s own. He squeezes it and Remus squeezes back.

Right now, watching the sun set over the lake, everything’s okay.

The lake is still it’s pale shade of sea green, but it’s no longer absorbing all light so much as spilling it out. It’s as dark as the rest of the world, but at the same time, it’s spilling light.

Giddy with happiness in the darkness, Sirius jumps into the lake fully clothed, amidst the sound of his friends cheering and laughing.

He falls through the water and through the tattered black veil, feeling as much love as he had a few moments ago. 

After happily falling through the warm darkness, Sirius is eventually no longer falling so much as floating through it, eventually arriving at what he thinks is solid ground.

Sirius is still unsure as to where or when he is, but he can see James and Lily in the distance, holding each other close as they smile at him. Lily looks absolutely radiant, wearing her favorite green dress and smiling as brightly as she did on her wedding day. James is whispering some joke into her ear and he sees her laugh.

Standing behind them, Sirius thinks he can see Regulus, clutching a locket close to his chest. He’s wearing a rare smile and after all these years, Sirius can’t wait to see him again. 

He feels water lapping at his feet as he walks towards them all.

It’s starting to wash away.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> This honestly made me so sad to write because Sirius's canonical life is honestly so depressing. I really wanted to write him a happy ending but the angst took over instead, and I just focused on some of the worst parts of his life. :)
> 
> Honestly I'd love to write a much longer marauders piece with an actual happy ending, because canon's all well and good, but i like Sirius Black more than I like canon. I'm not so sure I could commit to something that long but please let me know if it's something you'd like to see! If I did write it, it would probably cover fifth year to a little bit past graduation.
> 
> Also I love Regulus Black for no reason and it shows.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


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